A single fierce, chaotic year changes Sarrah Kibrom’s life forever. While her country struggles toward freedom, on the brink of violent change, she confronts her mother’s baffling illness—and the luminous inner strength with which the woman fights it—and tries to accept her father’s mysterious behavior. It is a year of loss and mourning, of trials and challenges, discoveries and madness beyond her understanding. She absorbs the secrets and suffering of the women from her culture, the vulnerability each must overcome in order to survive. She takes the sorrow, the darkness and the fire of all these trials into herself, absorbing the lessons and the pain. Will she allow these things to defeat her? Or will she become the resilient, radiant woman she is meant to be?